


With Trembling Hands

by althusserarien (ArmchairElvis)



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drugs, Gen, M/M, bamf!Hudson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-10
Updated: 2012-10-10
Packaged: 2017-11-15 23:37:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/533027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmchairElvis/pseuds/althusserarien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock is a black sheep, and Mrs. Hudson understands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Trembling Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Slight mentions of drug use. Gen. Mycroft, Mrs. Hudson, and Sherlock. (And the Cold War).
> 
> Regrettably un-betaed. Written for the [commfest](http://sherlockbbc.livejournal.com/tag/commfest) challenge at **[sherlockbbc](http://sherlockbbc.livejournal.com/)**.

It is a long cold war. London is mini skirts and free love, but Century House seems stuck in an earlier time. The men smell of smoke and brandy. Martha remembers the darned socks and the fish and chip teas of her childhood. 

This is not an easy place to work, the other secretaries tell her. They refer to themselves as "girls," — they are never more than that.

Darling, the men call her, and love, and occasionally sweetheart. They leave tea trays on her desk, cigarette butts floating in the curdled dregs. She is privy to the most extraordinary secrets, spoken in elevators while she stands demure and invisible in the corner.

Martha keeps her eyes open. She grows a thick skin. She doesn't cry in the stairwell, like Marjorie, or leave in a huff, like June. It is a game, and she knows she isn't in it to win. All she wants is to beat them.

...

"I have a proposal," Mycroft Holmes says, his voice as smooth as honey. I know you, Martha thinks. When you were fighting your way to the top in Vauxhall I was already our man in Berlin.

Oh, the things they told you, these always-nervous German men with insatiable appetites. They'd say things to a woman they wouldn't say to a man. They said things like _you wouldn't understand_ and _let me tell you what I overheard at the office today_. She had to learn to use their sexism as a weapon against them. It was a hard job, and a dangerous one. She keeps her sharp edges hidden beneath a nice lipstick and a pair of nylons.

And now, here he is. Mycroft Holmes: impeccable style, public-school accent. The Service's rising star, from a First to an office with his name on the door in three years. He knows where the bodies are buried. An unfortunate distaste for wet work, but you can't have everything. He's lighting a cigarette with shaking hands.

"You're the golden-haired boy," Martha says, lighting a cigarette of her own. "What could you possibly want from a doddery old thing like me?"

Mycroft Holmes smiles, his lips thin. I know who you are, the smile says. His shoes are freshly polished and the surface of his desk is impeccably neat and there's a bland spray of white Gemimas on the sideboard behind him, obviously placed there one of the firm, inscrutable assistants they all have now. Yet his hands still shake almost imperceptibly as he brings the cigarette to his lips, inhales softly. 

"I have... I have a family problem," Holmes says, and when he stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray on her desk, he's back in control.

...

The brother is nothing at all like she was expecting. The British security establishment casts its successors from the same mould: old families, public school. Always drinking, never drunk. No emotion. They never want to change the world because they own it.

Mycroft Holmes' brother has the hands of a pianist, not the blunt things with square-cut nails that Mycroft folded over his umbrella. He's living in a room above a curry shop in Lambeth and he never bothers to use the deadbolt and there is a sweet hash smell floating in the dusty air. When he comes home to find Martha sitting on the edge of his broken-backed sofa bed, he seems resigned. He has red eyes and a sad face and God, he's so young.

"Don't tell me," he says, his voice quick and low. "You're from the government. Mycroft sent you." His diction is precise, mocking, a voice that must beg for a fist in this part of London. He stands in his doorway, a carrier bag hanging from one clenched fist. She can see the outline of a book, a jar of jam, a can of lager.

He was born the same year as John, she thinks before she can stop herself. And then, dredged from her uncooperative memory, a line from a Heaney poem: a four foot box, a foot for every year. Oh, he's so sad and so smart and so brilliant, it sets the old ache going, the battered thing at the centre of her chest.

"How did you know?" Martha says, because Mycroft told her this: if he speaks, keep him talking.

...

"I understand you're being blackmailed," Martha says, watching Sherlock sip gratefully from a pint of Fullers London Pride. His shirt is wrinkled, and there's a cigarette burn near the front pocket. He's grimy, unkempt. He is nothing at all like his brother. All they have in common is their arrogance and their eyes.

Sherlock lights a cigarette, meets her gaze. "You're wondering how I got to be the black sheep." So sure of himself.

"Oh, Sherlock dear," Martha says. "I ran away to London at seventeen. I know a thing or two about being an outcast in your own family."

"You don't know my family," he says, and his eyes flick downwards. He takes another gulp of his beer.

I've been fighting against families like yours all my life, she thinks but doesn't say. There's something ragged in his voice. Coke, her mind supplies. Insufficient data, she decides. He's jittery. He speaks so low she can barely hear him above the buzz coming from the bar.

There's a man, Victor Trevor. He told Sherlock he loved him. He lied. The poor boy has a scientist's mind and a philosopher's heart. And now he's knee-deep in a habit and neck-deep in love and his cold, cold brother is embarrassed. The poor boy, Martha thinks. The poor, poor boy.

She does a little digging, has a word with Victor Trevor. He never bothers them again.

...

Sherlock is just as thin, now, but he seems stronger. He smiles more, his voice is louder. He explains things to her, a lot: how to program the GPS, what radio station to choose, obscure facets of American criminal law.

He doesn't share his brother's distaste for getting his hands dirty. Martha has a problem: an unwise third marriage, and he helps her solve it. And if you wanted to know any more, well, she'd have to kill you.

She's driving him to the airport, afterward, when he leans across suddenly and turns the radio down. She can smell his cologne. He's given up smoking, she realises. Good boy.

"I never thanked you," he says. "For what you did for me before."

"Perhaps you should thank your brother," Martha says. "After all, all he did was ask a favour from a fellow government employee."

"We don't speak much," Sherlock says dismissively. "You never told me how you did it."

"Why don't you tell _me_?," Martha says. Information is everything, in her business. But Sherlock Holmes can read people like books.

"You like it when I explain things," he says, his voice soft. "Why is that?"

He's so perceptive, so blind to some things. You could be my son, she aches to say, but doesn't.

...

Mycroft Holmes has a corner office, now. He's given up smoking and started wearing bespoke shoes. Martha has retired. She's free from her marital mistake, now, and, well, she knows where the bodies are buried. So she'll always be comfortable.

"I'd like you to keep an eye on my brother," Mycroft says. "I'd be willing to pay you, if you need that sort of encouragement."

He plays the game so well: distaste for money. Careful arrogance. Micromanaging his brother's life when they barely speak. Martha is sure he does it out of love. They're not like other people, the Holmes brothers.

Sherlock Holmes arrives at her door with a microscope and a laptop in a cardboard box. He sets the box on her brand-new blonde wood kitchen table, where it stays for the next month and a half.

"So, you're offering me a place," he says. "I get a cut rate on the rent because you want a man around the house and you owe me a favour, is that it?"

"Yes, dear," Martha says. Five minutes, she thinks to herself. She listens to him thumping around in the next room, opening the wardrobe. He's back at the door before three minutes have passed.

"Even though I was paying _you_ back when I framed your husband. And I don't have much of a reputation as a handyman."

Martha puts her head on her side, clasps her hands in front of her. He smiles to himself.

"Oh," he says. "How much did he offer you?"

"Fifty pounds a week," Martha says.

"Excellent," Sherlock says. "I'll split it with you."

He'd make an excellent spy. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Mid-Term Break](http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/mid-term-break/), Seamus Heaney.


End file.
